Pring Corp. seeks zone change

Less than an hour after the Spokane Valley City Council passed an ordinance to allow vehicle sales in one zone in the Sprague/Appleway corridor to benefit a business owner there, a City Council member stated that he wanted to pass a similar ordinance to benefit a property owner in another zone in the corridor.

Senior planner Scott Kuhta reported that while collecting public comment on the city center zone in the Sprague/Appleway Revitalization Plan letters were received expressing interest in changing the zone to add vehicle sales as a permitted use.

Since the city center zone is meant to be a dense, urban, pedestrian-friendly area, such an addition would likely require a comprehensive plan amendment, Kuhta said. Such an amendment would take significantly longer to approve than amending the city code because the comprehensive plan can only be changed once a year.

Jim Magnuson, owner of the University City Mall, and Bradley Pring, president of the Pring Corp., sent letters to the council requesting the zone change to add vehicle sales as a permitted use.

According to the letters, Pring Corp. has signed a purchase agreement for six acres of land at 108 S. Dartmouth Road, at the west end of the old mall, which is largely vacant except for a burned-out tavern. According to Pring’s letter, the sale is contingent on the city changing the zoning of the parcel. Pring writes that “time is of the essence,” and he would like approval for the change within 60 days.

Councilman Dean Grafos said that restricting property uses is “not the right thing to do” and said he would like city staff to prepare a code amendment that would allow vehicle sales in the city center zone, despite Kuhta’s contention that such a change would likely required a comprehensive plan amendment. Kuhta said he would research the issue and report back to the council.

Bradley Pring is the son of Jack Pring, who gave campaign contributions of $1,250 to council members Gary Schimmels, Tom Towey and Brenda Grassel during the 2009 campaign that elected them to the council. He gave $500 to Grafos. Kuhta also reported on several other changes local business and property owners would like to see in the zone. The issues include regulations that would block developments in other areas of the zone once a binding site plan has been completed for a new “core street” and the positioning of prelocated streets. The streets were inserted about every five acres to add more north-south routes. “The plan really calls for a connected street network and also smaller blocks,” Kuhta said. The council could change the location of the streets with a text amendment but a comprehensive plan amendment would have to be done to eliminate the prelocated streets altogether.

There was also discussion on the nonconforming use regulations that allow a nonconforming use to be replaced by a similar use within two years of becoming vacant. “The rest of the city is one year,” he said.

Grafos and Grassel expressed interested in expanding the two-year period but Kuhta recommended going through the entire SARP plan before making any changes to the rule. The review of the plan will be complete long before two years is up. “At this point it’s not going to affect anybody,” he said. “You will know what you will do with the subarea plan long before that.”

Councilwoman Rose Dempsey advocated caution in making changes. “If we get too carried away with throwing away all our regulations, we’re going to come up in a difficult position when times are better,” she said. “Just because times are bad right now doesn’t mean we should change everything. I fear that we’re using the recession as an excuse for anything and everything.”

In other business, the council held a public hearing on the 2011 budget. Finance director Ken Thompson said the numbers keep changing, and the 2011 budget is now closer to $62 million than to the $63 million it has been projected to be. The changes are also having a positive effect on long-term budget projections. “As we trim the 2011 budget, we’re helping ourselves out in 2014,” he said.

Spokane Valley planning commissioner and real estate agent Arne Woodard told the council during the hearing that property sales are down significantly this year. He urged the city to be “a little more cautious” in projecting revenues. “The budget, I think, has to reflect the numbers that will be coming in.”

Property owner Gene Strunk said he was upset when he came to pick up some documents from the planning department a few weeks ago and was told that no one was available because they were participating in a staff barbecue. The employees “basically stole” money from the city by attending a barbecue on city time, he said, and wanted to know how many of these “little kumbaya moments” the city was paying for. “I want to know and if I don’t find out I will hire my own counsel to pursue this further,” he said.

No one in the council chambers responded to Strunk’s comments, but after the meeting acting City Attorney Cary Driskell said the barbecue is an annual staff-appreciation event and all the food and supplies are purchased by the department heads using their own money. The department heads cooked the food while staff members rotated through the barbecue during their lunch hour, he said.

Council members Dempsey, Grafos and Bill Gothmann stated during the July 27 council meeting that they attended the barbecue.